Questions of Principle in Politics

The Liberal Bourgeoisie and Reformism

Published:Severnaya PravdaNo. 28, September 4, 1913;Nash PutNo. 9, September 4, 1913.

      Signed:V. I..

      Published according to theSevernaya Pravdatext.Source:Lenin
	  Collected Works,

      Progress Publishers,1977,

      Moscow,Volume 19,

      pages350-353.Translated:The Late George HannaTranscription\Markup:R. CymbalaPublic Domain:Lenin Internet Archive

      (2004).You may freely copy, distribute,
	display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and
	commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
	Archive” as your source.•README

Inthe name of the merchants of all Russia, the millionaire
Salazkin made an appeal for extensive political re forms in a speech at
Nizhni-Novgorod Fair. At a meeting of three thousand metalworkers in
St. Petersburg, the reformists suffered a decisive defeat, receiving only
150 votes for their candidates for membership of the executive
body.[2]

Thesetwo facts, which simply cry out for comparison, make even quite
unprincipled people ask questions of principle concerning present-day
Russian politics. There are masses of people in all classes in Russia that
are interested in politics, but few of them realise the significance of the
theoretical principles involved in the presentation of questions of
politics. Few people realise the significance of political parties that
always give well-considered, precise and properly formulated answers to
these questions. When the parties are connected with definite classes, such
answers are given on the basis of work among the masses and are verified by
years of such work.

Theanswers given by the Marxists were precisely of this type when four
and a half years ago they appraised the June Third system and their tasks
in relation to
				 it.[1]Workers who for years and years have been acting conscientiously in the
spirit of those answers in every possible sphere are divided by a deep gulf
from those confused intellectuals who fear any sort of definite answer and
who, at every step, slide into reformism and liquidationism.

Onecan only pity those people who, watching the struggle of the
Marxists against the liquidators, avoid the issue with miserable words
about the harmfulness of disputes, squabbles, internecine struggles,
factionalism.... Many self-styled Marxists and all “Left” Narodniks
belong to this category!

Thosewho, in principle, are champions of the bourgeoisie and enemies
of Marxism, the liberals from the newspaperRech, have been unable
to ignore the above facts. They repeat all their tired, pitiful phrases in
an editorial article (in issue No. 234), but now they go further.

Theliberals are forced to admit that “the struggle between the
Bolsheviks and the liquidators is going on every where”, and that “it has
percolated all the pores of the working-class organism”.

Sowhat of it? Could it be accidental?

“Importantdisagreements on matters of principle have
   long been apparent; in the final analysis they may be reduced to the
   question of the course to be taken in the further development of the
   country.”

“Importantdisagreements on matters of principle have
   long been apparent; in the final analysis they may be reduced to the
   question of the course to be taken in the further development of the
   country.”

Atlast they have thought it out! The Marxists explained this in
December 1908, the liberals have begun to realise it in August 1913. Better
late than never.

“Isthe path of reforms conceivable,” continues the
   liberal news paper, “or are ‘reforms possible only as a by-product of a
   movement that is completely free of all the narrowness of reformism’
   [quoted fromSevernaya Pravda]. That is how the question is
   presented.”

“Isthe path of reforms conceivable,” continues the
   liberal news paper, “or are ‘reforms possible only as a by-product of a
   movement that is completely free of all the narrowness of reformism’
   [quoted fromSevernaya Pravda]. That is how the question is
   presented.”

Precisely!The question of liquidationism is merely part of the
question of the non-party reformists who have broken away from Marxism.

Itwill be interesting to see how the liberals, the champions of
reformism in principle, defend it.

“Thereis, of course, a great deal of metaphysics and
   fatalism in the opinion that reforms are possible only as a
   ‘by-product’. There can be no reforms without reformers and reformism, even
   if only as a ‘by-product’”....

“Thereis, of course, a great deal of metaphysics and
   fatalism in the opinion that reforms are possible only as a
   ‘by-product’. There can be no reforms without reformers and reformism, even
   if only as a ‘by-product’”....

Thereagain you have a sample of angry words and an attempt to evade an
answer!  What have metaphysics got to do with it, when historical
experience, the experience of England, France, Germany and Russia, the
experience ofall modern history in Europe and Asia, shows that serious reforms have
always been merely the by-product of a movement completely free of the
narrowness of reformism?

Andwhat has fatalism to do with it, when, that same experience says
clearly that it is the very classes hostile to reformism that have produced
the greatest effect?

Orperhaps there is more “fatalism” to be observed in the conduct of
the Russian working class in the early years of the twentieth century than
there was in the conduct of the liberal Zemstvo people and bourgeoisie in
the last thirty years of the nineteenth century? You liberal gentlemen make
yourselves ridiculous!

Canyou possibly be such ignoramuses that you do not see the connection
between the interests of the bourgeoisie as a class and their desire to
confine themselves to reformism, between the condition of the working class
and its contrary desire?

Indeed,gentlemen, you are poor advocates of reformism in general! But
perhaps your defence of reformism in present-day Russia is better?

“Itmust be admitted,” continuesRech, “that
   the situation now obtaining, one that has time and again demonstrated to
   the most modest reformers the futility of their efforts, turns people’s
   thoughts, and especially their feelings, towards the negation of
   reformism.”

“Itmust be admitted,” continuesRech, “that
   the situation now obtaining, one that has time and again demonstrated to
   the most modest reformers the futility of their efforts, turns people’s
   thoughts, and especially their feelings, towards the negation of
   reformism.”

Sothere you have it! It seems that even you, who make a principle of
advocating reformism, cannot find support either in historical experience
or in “the situation now obtaining” in Russia. Even you have to admit
that the situation is against you!

Whatmetaphysicians and fatalists you are, gentlemen—or what blind
slaves to the narrow, selfish, cowardly moneybag—if you continue to
uphold the unprincipled position of reformism in contradiction to the
experience of history, in contradiction to the experience of “the
situation now obtaining”! Are not you, who do not believe in reforms
yourselves, actually defending that bourgeoisie that strives to gain profit
at other people’s expense?

Itis understandable that an advanced contingent of the working class
of Russia, the metalworkers of St. Petersburg, have dealt a crushing defeat
to the reformists and liquidators among their number. According to the
figuresof the liberal and reformistRech, the reformist liquidators
obtained 150 out of 2,000 votes, that is, seven and a half per cent of the
total. Does this not show again and again—after the elections of workers
to the Fourth Duma, after the history of the emergence of the working-class
press in St. Petersburg and Moscow—that the liquidators represent only
confused and half-liberal intellectuals, and that the mass of the
politically conscious workers have firmly and resolutely condemned and
rejected them?

[1]Seepresent edition, Vol. 15, pp. 321–24.—Ed.

[2]TheExecutive of the St. Petersburg Metalworkers’ Union was re-elected
on August 25 (September 7), 1913. The meeting was attended by about 3,000
workers. Despite the efforts of the liquidators to turn the meeting against
the Bolshevik Executive of the union, a resolution of thanks to the
Executive for its work was adopted by an overwhelming majority. The list of
candidates, first voted on, put up by the liquidators obtained about 150
votes; the Bolshevik list, published inSevernaya Pravda, was
adopted by a vast majority.